I'm surprised that Bee didn't mention that Graham *is* a military lawyer.

She also, of course, completely glosses over the fact that *all* military justice passes through, at some point, unit commanders, who have an interest in the unit as well as an interest in 'justice'. And, as a point of fact, have a much lower standard to find someone 'guilty' than a real live court. But also have a limited set of crimes they can adjudicate and punishments they can dish out before it needs to be kicked up to a higher level and a real justice system with adversarial procedures and impartial judges. (that's the complicated flow chart)

when you wake up as the queen of the n=1 kingdom and mount your steed non sequiturius, do you look out upon all you survey and think “damn, it feels good to be a green idea sleeping furiously?" - dhex

Graham being a military lawyer makes him and his argument look worse, so, yeah, I guess she should have mentioned that. The fact that commanders have an incentive in conflict with the interest in justice that most people have is more pertinent than pointing out an interest in justice that, again, most people have, and can be considered a given. Plus, this is specifically about rape. Seems like a crime that should be handled by specialists, especially since reports suggest that the current process is lacking.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." -E Benn

That fiction is indeed fictional, but what shouldn't be fictional is a military where men and women are treated the same and held to the same standards. And also one where sexual assault is taken seriously and accusations of such are handled appropriately.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." -E Benn

the innominate one wrote:That fiction is indeed fictional, but what shouldn't be fictional is a military where men and women are treated the same and held to the same standards. And also one where sexual assault is taken seriously and accusations of such are handled appropriately.

Okay. So are you willing to put them in the same uniforms, with the same grooming standards? Are you going to berth them in the same spaces? Are you going to hold them to the same physical readiness standards? Are you going to make Sea/Shore rotation the same for male and female sailors? If a mans wife is pregnant, will he be excused from forward deployment, or if a female is pregnant will you send her into combat? Or alternatively, force her to terminate the pregnancy? In short, are you willing to treat women the same as men and hold them to the same standards across the board?

the innominate one wrote:That fiction is indeed fictional, but what shouldn't be fictional is a military where men and women are treated the same and held to the same standards. And also one where sexual assault is taken seriously and accusations of such are handled appropriately.

Okay. So are you willing to put them in the same uniforms, with the same grooming standards? Are you going to berth them in the same spaces? Are you going to hold them to the same physical readiness standards? Are you going to make Sea/Shore rotation the same for male and female sailors? If a mans wife is pregnant, will he be excused from forward deployment, or if a female is pregnant will you send her into combat? Or alternatively, force her to terminate the pregnancy? In short, are you willing to treat women the same as men and hold them to the same standards across the board?

What does any of that have to do with not prosecuting sexual assault? Are you saying that the sexual assault problem is caused by having men and women serve in the same military while not having the same dress code? Should we solve the sexual assault problem by keeping the women soldiers strictly segregated from the men soldiers, unless they're accomanied by a male relative?

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the innominate one wrote:That fiction is indeed fictional, but what shouldn't be fictional is a military where men and women are treated the same and held to the same standards. And also one where sexual assault is taken seriously and accusations of such are handled appropriately.

Okay. So are you willing to put them in the same uniforms, with the same grooming standards? Are you going to berth them in the same spaces? Are you going to hold them to the same physical readiness standards? Are you going to make Sea/Shore rotation the same for male and female sailors? If a mans wife is pregnant, will he be excused from forward deployment, or if a female is pregnant will you send her into combat? Or alternatively, force her to terminate the pregnancy? In short, are you willing to treat women the same as men and hold them to the same standards across the board?

What does any of that have to do with not prosecuting sexual assault? Are you saying that the sexual assault problem is caused by having men and women serve in the same military while not having the same dress code? Should we solve the sexual assault problem by keeping the women soldiers strictly segregated from the men soldiers, unless they're accomanied by a male relative?

To answer your last question first, segregation would be a step in the right direction. It doesn't need to be that strict, but I think separate services, i.e. WACS, WAVS, works better. I know there were problems with the female services not getting funded and opportunities for advancement. But I think those problems should have been addressed individually instead of putting men and women in the same service and then creating a fiction that women are the same as men while having a bunch of exceptions and addendum, that make it not the same at all.

The other thing, is while I keep hearing about sexual assault is rampant in the service, that was not my experience at all. And this was back in the 80's. Women in the work place in the military was a HUGE stress. It was like you're hearing about how it is on campus now. A woman makes an accusation, and now there has to be an investigation, and the guy is guilty until proven innocent because that's pretty much the way military justice works.

I keep hearing that it's SOP to make the accusers' life difficult and tell them to shut up about it. Maybe that's true, I wouldn't know. But I do know that it's asking for trouble to shove men and women into the same workplace with a bunch of special rules for women, and then pretend that they're doing the same job and competing on equal terms.

To clarify. There's no excuse for sexual assault or sexual harassment. That should not be tolerated. All I'm saying is that we've created an environment where that is a predictable and foreseeable unintended consequence.

But I do know that it's asking for trouble to shove men and women into the same workplace with a bunch of special rules for women, and then pretend that they're doing the same job and competing on equal terms.

So you're saying male-on-female rape wouldn't be such a problem in the military, if only women in the military were required to do the same number of push-ups as the men?

"Myself, despite what they say about libertarians, I think we're actually allowed to pursue options beyond futility or sucking the dicks of the powerful." -- Eric the .5b

It is difficult not to draw the conclusion that Warren thinks that military servicemen are akin to those Muslim men who believe they should not have to control themselves, therefore women must avoid inflaming their lust.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." -E Benn

I can see how unequal standards and officially enshrined sex/gender disparities might cause certain morale problems. Rape is way above and beyond a morale problem, and it's ludicrous to blame it on requiring women to do fewer push-ups or whatever.

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--D.A. Ridgely

Thing I don't get is, even if we assume "women must meet lower physical-strength standards" explains the prevalence of the military's male-on-female rape, it still doesn't explain the problem of male-on-male rape, from which the military also suffers. Is it, like, a situation wherein the male rape victims tend to be significantly older than their attackers? I'm pretty sure the military fitness standards for a 40-year-old male are lower than for a 21-year-old. Perhaps the youngsters keep raping the middle-aged guys because they're pissed off about having to pretend their elders are doing the same job and competing on equal terms?

"Myself, despite what they say about libertarians, I think we're actually allowed to pursue options beyond futility or sucking the dicks of the powerful." -- Eric the .5b

Physical fitness requirements do decrease as the service member gets older. The rest of this comment is my opinion based on conversations with officers and senior NCOs over the years I worked for the Navy, Air Force, Army and DoD.

The Navy has some unique problems the other uniformed services do not have or have to a lesser degree. Long stretches of sea duty with young, all male sailors living in very close proximity to one another will always lead to a certain amount of institutional homosexuality, aka sodomy; hence, the old quip about the British Navy operating on "sodomy, rum and the lash." The availability of vaginas does little more than reduce the institutional homosexuality and almost certainly leads to an increase in overall sexual congress, voluntary or not. (The Navy also distinguishes roles within the service more directly and distinctly than the other services. If you're not a line officer, you don't ever get to drive the boat. Thus, e.g, in a crisis, a LT JG line officer would outrank a Commander in the Supply Corps for purposes of temporary command of the combat vessel they were on.)

Pregnancy and early infant care raise additional problems. Female service member have been known to become pregnant rather than face an unwanted deployment, and even if there is no intentional goldbricking, a number of male service members will resent the disparate treatment.

Really, though, excepting the Marines, who are all barking dog crazy, the only serious question is whether a service member in a combat position is deployable. The majority of service members are in the "tail" of the "tooth to tail" ratio; that is, they serve in some sort of logistical or support capacity, anyway, so the question of how far they can throw a grenade or how many pull ups they can do is for the most part irrelevant. Were it up to me, I'd say anyone who can meet bona fide minimum physical conditions, whatever they may be, should at least on those grounds be deployable.

I get why women want to be, at least in principle, eligible for all combat roles; it's a major factor in promotion and advancement. But if the question is one of brute physical strength, e.g., in the infantry, it seems to me that the Army should be able to say, male or female, if you can't throw the grenade far enough, you don't qualify. Ceteris paribus, color blind people can't be pilots, and while I know that even hinting that being a woman should be regarded as some sort of disability is wrong, the point remains that the only legitimate basis of attacking service qualifications is that they're not rationally related to the actual duty required.

Last edited by D.A. Ridgely on 12 Jun 2016, 16:24, edited 1 time in total.

Color blind individuals also aren't permitted to work on electronics, which is why my dad ended up in the bursar's office in the navy. His brother is a master electrician, so presumably he's not color blind.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." -E Benn

the innominate one wrote:Color blind individuals also aren't permitted to work on electronics, which is why my dad ended up in the bursar's office in the navy. His brother is a master electrician, so presumably he's not color blind.

In that case, it's only to be expected that military personnel with normal color vision are gonna start raping the shit out of the colorblind, if they haven't done so already.

"Myself, despite what they say about libertarians, I think we're actually allowed to pursue options beyond futility or sucking the dicks of the powerful." -- Eric the .5b

I haven't watched that John Oliver takes on gun control blah blah Australia something something clip that's floating around Facebook. I got it described in detail to me by my supervisors, though. It sounded like 40% content and 60% "gotcha!"/creative editing.

Edited to add: not sure how accurate their description was, as one of them kept calling him Tom Colbert.

Geese are like perpetual motion machines only producing shit rather than energy. And those malicious little bastards shit the same shade of green as park grass, too.

Also, one of the very first newspaper articles I ever had to write, shortly after getting my very-first newspaper job, was about how a local (Plymouth, Connecticut), swimming hole/lake had to be closed due high levels of e-coli and other nasties, blamed in part on the enormous quantities of goose shit that ended up in the water.

"Myself, despite what they say about libertarians, I think we're actually allowed to pursue options beyond futility or sucking the dicks of the powerful." -- Eric the .5b